There’s no extraneous storytelling here, no scene that feels unnecessary, no scary moment that plays like it’s pandering. This is the expertly told, horrifying story of an abusive relationship filtered through the lens of a classic horror movie monster.

Moss also strengthens the notion that this is a monster movie unusually interested in looking past the toxic-male machinations of its famous character and toward the lasting horrors left in his wake. In other words, the stuff that previous movies, and real life, have sometimes tried to turn invisible.

Leigh Whannell's bleak and brutal reimagining of the classic Invisible Man is chillingly effective.

This gratifyingly clever and, at times, powerfully staged thriller is too rooted in our era to be called old-fashioned — its release, in fact, feels almost karmically synched to the week of the Harvey Weinstein verdict. Yet there’s one way that the movie is old-fashioned: It does an admirable job of taking us back to a time when a horror film could actually mean something.

The Invisible Man is both a jumpstart and a template for their renaissance: The movie delves into the sheer terror of abuse and explores how Cecilia doesn’t even really understand the psychological scars until she begins to discover some semblance of freedom.